With an elevation of 4,421m (14,505ft), Mount Whitney is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. We battled torrential rain, hail, tent destroying marmots, altitude sickness, a burst camelback and a high altitude electrical storm… But we successfully bagged this summit in characteristically chaotic and disastrous Tom-and-Aoife style.

   

About Mount Whitney

Located in the stunning Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, the summit of Mount Whitney lies on the Sierra Crest and the Great Basin Divide. Most interestingly, the summit of this great peak is only 85 miles from the lowest point in North America – Badwater Basin (86m below sea level). This means that the cluster of high Sierra Nevada peaks jut dramatically from their lowland surroundings. 

The most popular route to the summit is via the Mount Whitney Trail. This route covers 22 miles and involves gaining over 1,900m in elevation. Most climbers do this in two days, an arduous endeavour, though some take longer and some (crazy people) do it as an 18 hour ‘day hike’. 

Red Tape

Mount Whitney has become a popular climb thanks to the rising allure of summit fever and the ubiquity of social media. As a result, permits are required year round to prevent dangerously high numbers of attempted ascents. Acquiring permits is a convoluted process, especially if you are trying to get permits for a certain date from out of the country. The best way to obtain a permit is by entering into the permit lottery.

If you miss the lottery, you instead rely on the fact that people end up canceling their trip. These spaces become available for reservations on a first come first served basis. If you can’t get one of these, and you have enough time to hang around Lone Pine for a while, you can try for a walk-in permit. 

   

Planning Our Trip

We decided to celebrate our Batchelor’s degree graduations by heading out to California for a month of hiking, climbing and good old American road trippin’! Our trip revolved around driving the iconic roads of the state, with a prolonged stay in the desert of Joshua Tree and the moutains of the Sierra Nevada. We read up on the recommended routes and peaks, and realised that we would be crazy not to try and bag the summit of the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. 

   

Acclimitisation

San Jacinto one of the most topographically prominent peaks in the United States. At 3,202m (10,834ft) and located in Southern California, it provides the perfect opportunity to acclimatise for Mount Whitney. I know from experience that I suffer horribly from altitude sickness (one day I will write up my disastrous Kilimanjaro summit experience!), so acclimatisation is extra important for me. The hike starts at the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway base station, where you take the tram up to the Mountain Station (at 5,873ft). From there, it is a tough but stunning 11 mile hike. 

The view from San Jacinto is the most sublime spectacle to be found anywhere on this earth!

John Muir (Naturalist)

The hike took us 7 hours in total. I suffered some mild altitude sickness towards the top of San Jacinto. I was dizzy and felt like a drunkard – I couldn’t walk in a straight line! This was likely due to the rapid ascent on the tram. Otherwise, it was a super enjoyable summit experience. John Muir was right about the views!

Permits

Our August trip to California was planned and arranged fairly last minute, so we missed the permit lottery. Instead, we spent the weeks in the run-up to our trip obsessively checking the National Forest Service website every morning in the hopes that we could find two spaces that would fit with our dates. We didn’t! Instead, we decided to chance our luck and try for a walk-in permit. We were fairly flexible, as we had allowed a 5 day period within which to make the 2 day summit attempt. 

When we got to Lone Pine, we immediately headed to the National Forest Service office. They looked at us like we were idiots and informed us that the draw for the day had already taken place, and there were no available permits. At this stage, we were pretty resigned to the fact that we would almost certainly not be able to climb Mount Whitney. However, we went back again first thing the next morning. We were hoping to claim one of the uncollected permits from the previous day. Around 10 other groups of people had also turned up with the same idea! The permits were therefore assigned using a raffle. The park rangers handed round a bag of numbers – those with the lowest numbers would have the first chance to claim the remaining permits. 

   

Our Lucky Day!

We were offered the bag first, so I chose a folded-up piece of paper. I am notoriously unlucky, so was convinced I would have picked a high number. I couldn’t believe my luck when I unfold the paper and realised I had pulled a 1! With unimaginable good fortune, we were handed two permits to climb  Mount Whitney. The only downside was that we had to start our climb that very day!

   

The Climb

As we had only secured our permits that morning, we were later setting out than we would have liked. However, we were so happy to have gotten lucky with the permits that we weren’t phased. We had already packed our rucksacks, so all that was left was to pack our food into the bear canisters we rented. These are compulsory for the storage of all food and food waste. We chose to use MREs (Meals-Ready-to-Eat: field rations used by the U.S. military) for our two-day trip, and just about managed to squeeze all of the food into one bulky canister. 

Late to the game, but ready to go!

Day 1

We started hiking up through the valley, crossing streams and passing through hanging meadows. The views were stunning – from the high spikes of the mountains ahead to the lush greenery surrounding us and down to the barren valley thousand of feet below. 

About 4 hours into the hike, I felt a cold wetness spreading over my back. My camelback had somehow gotten a puncture and the entire contents had leaked out into my bag. All my spare clothes, as well as my sleeping bag, were completely soaked. We considered turning back, but I managed to fix the hole using the picture repair kit from my sleeping mat! I refilled my camelback at the next stream (thank you chlorine tablets!). I hung some of my wet clothes over the outside of my rucksack, hoping they would dry as we ascended in the sun. 

Eventually, we reached Outpost Camp. It was beautiful, with abundant tree cover and soft ground. We were tired and wanted to stay, but knew we had to push on to Trail Camp in order to make the summit attempt easier.

   

Trail Camp

After around 6 hours of strenuous uphill hiking, we finally arrived at Trail Camp. We would be camping here overnight before making our summit attempt early the next morning. Trail Camp was cold, barren, rocky and exposed. We pitched our tent and collected water from the nearby lake.

After setting up camp, we were introduced to a UCLA research team. There was a cardiologist who was doing a study on altitude sickness. He was trying to prove a correlation between the symptoms of altitude sickness and the presence of a patent foramen ovale (PFO) – a small hole in the heart that doesn’t close as it it should after birth. He asked us to take part in his study, and we gladly agreed. After I told him about my previous stuggles at altitude (and the fact that I often get migraines with aura), he told me that he was “90% sure” I would have the hole. Tom, who doesn’t suffer from migraines or altitude sickness, was extremely unlikely to have a PFO but would be valuable as a control. We were told to go to the local hospital once we were down to undergo an ultrasound experiment to find out if we had PFOs. 

As we settled down to eat our dinner, we heard a rustling from outside of the tent. I unzipped the door to find a chipmunk happily munching on a rogue nut that we had dropped from our trail mix!

Summit Day

We slept well and woke at 3am, to start our hike at 4am. The rangers had told us that there are often bad thunderstorms on the mountain, but they only generally happen after 12pm. We wanted to ensure we were down by this time. It was freezing cold, raining heavily and extremely windy. We didn’t want to start our day soaking wet and freezing cold, so we decided to try and wait out the bad weather. It finally calmed down around 6am, so we set off as quickly as we could. We began the climb in total darkness, with only the light of our headtorches to guide us. Eventually, the sun came up. The weather was beautiful – I was sweating in just my t-shirt. 

   

99 Problems But a Switchback Ain’t One

We made our way up and along the seemingly never-ending series of switchbacks (99 to be exact!). However, about two hours into the climb, the sky darkened. In the space of about two minutes, it started raining and then hailing. This was the worst hail I had ever seen. The balls weren’t huge, but there were so many of them coming down with such force that it was actually painful. The wind picked up, blowing the hard pellets down every hole, seam and sleeve. Soon, we were drenched. 

The decision was made to turn back. We were freezing cold, miserable and feeling pessimistic about our chances of successfully summiting in such bad weather. We started to descend, with our tails between legs. But within five minutes, the hail had ceased and the sun had returned! We turned around and continued our ascent. Our clothes dried off quickly as we were moving fast, trying to make up the time we had lost. I felt brilliant! No sign of altitude sickness, even though others at Trail Camp had told us they were suffering the night before. 

Eventually, we reached the Trail Crest. I began to develop the worst migraine of my life. I popped a paracetamol, donned my sunglasses and hoped for the best. The last two miles of the hike felt like a lifetime. I felt awful and, looking back, the whole experience is just a big blur. 

Success!

But, at 11am, we finally made it! We only spent five minutes at the summit because I needed to start descending quickly to get rid of my migraine. At the summit, we were disappointed. We had read about the phenomenal views from the top, but we were instead greeted by dark cloud cover! This was clearly a sign of the weather turning. We started to descend, and I slowly began to feel human again. 

The Wrath of Zeus

An hour into our descent, the worst thunder and lightening storm I have ever experienced came seemingly out of nowhere. On our way up, we had noticed a sign on the Trail Crest reading “EXTREME DANGER: LIGHTENING. If you notice any signs of an incoming storm do NOT go beyond this point”. We were about a hour and a half away from that sign, up the mountain!

The lightening was close. We tried the old trick of counting the number of seconds between the ‘flash’ and the ‘bang’… but there were no seconds between them! They occurred simultaneously, and constantly. I realised that I could feel the static in the air. Tom didn’t seem phased, but I was scared. I called out to him to voice my concerns. He turned around with his mouth open. My hair was standing completely upright, like someone had rubbed a million balloons on my head. For the first time during our two day hike, we were alone on the ridge. We wondered where everyone had gone. 

Danger Close

We rounded a corner and found a group of people huddling into the rocks. I watched as they manically threw their walking poles, and some even their backpacks, off the side of the mountain. They were laying flat on the ground into the rocks, and half of them were crying in fear.

I realised I wasn’t just being melodramatic and this was actually very serious! We stayed with the group, because the lightening was striking over the ridge that we were heading for. Then the rain and hail started up again. This hail was about a million times worse than the last! After five minutes we were all sitting in huge piles of hail and we were soaked through. There was one woman who was clearly terrified, and kept screaming.

We waited and waited the storm to stop but it didn’t. I was getting dangerously cold. We realised we were faced with a choice: risk getting struck by lightening or get hyperthermia. I was so cold, bits of me were going numb so I HAD to start moving. We left for the ridge. Some of the people followed us and some stayed. Luckily, by the time we got to the exposed ridge the lightening had moved and the storm was starting to fade away.

Back at Trail Camp

The weather motivated us to walk unbelievably quickly, so we descended back down to camp in no time at all! We arrived back at the tent to find another stroke of bad luck. Marmots had eaten their way through Tom’s (brand new and expensive) tent, leaving a load of huge holes! We had left one chewing gum wrapper in the tent by mistake, which they had sniffed out. Belongings that we had left in the tent (Tom’s spare inhaler, the car keys, spare clothes etc.) were strewn around on the ground. Miraculously, nothing was missing, though our spare clothes are drenched.

We were exhausted, shaken and soaking wet. We tried to dry off in the tent, but the wind was coming in through the gaping holes and freezing us solid. Instead, we packed up, and left camp. The walk back to Whitney Portal was long, and my knees were playing up. However, we managed to get down by 7pm, covering 6 miles in just under 4 hours. We headed straight to the local diner for some well deserved burgers and beers!

   

UCLA Study

The following morning, we went to the local hospital. A headband was placed onto our heads (a Transcranial Doppler ultrasound) and we were injected with an air bubble! WHAT?! Yes, that was my initial reaction too! Contrary to urban myths, small air bubbles in the blood stream are apparently perfectly safe! The researcher listened to the blood vessels in our brain to see if the air bubble had passed through. If it had, that would mean it had bypassed the lungs by passing through a PFO in the heart. Fascinatingly, Tom was found to have a PFO and I was not! I think we might have messed up their research…